Origin of the Genetic Code is suprascientific

Origin of the Genetic Code is suprascientifichttp://jrsm.rsmjournals.com.newproxy.rsm.ac.uk/cgi/eletters/103/2/43 Journal of Royal Society of Medicine March 15 2010
Response: The disappointments of the double helix: a master theory
Origin of the genetic code is suprascientific
The title of Dr James Le Fanu’s magnificent article suggests inadvertently that, with all the advances in genomic research, our inability to have “a mind capable of understanding the origins of the universe” [1] is to be blamed on the double helix when he could justifiably have pointed his finger at ourselves.
Discoverer of the ‘Double Helix’, Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, confessed his inability to explain “the origin of the genetic code” [2]. I discovered the reason why from Professor Sir Peter Medawar FRS OM, another Nobel Laureate, who taught that questions like origins not only go “beyond the explanatory confidence of science” [3 (p. xiii)] but also that “science cannot answer these ultimate questions and no conceivable advance of science could empower it to do so” [3 (p. 59)].
It is beginning to dawn on some of the world’s brightest scientists that Medawar is quite right, and that DNA, with its genetic code, belongs to the lowest rung (statistics) of information-transmission whose other rungs, in ascending order, capable of sending a message and producing results are syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and apobetics [4]. Useful messages do not arise anyhow. The first question I ask when I receive useful information is not “How was this information sent?” but “Who sent this?”
Until we begin to accept Medawar’s humbling limitation of the “explanatory confidence of science” [3] and admit that the origin of the universe and of DNA information programming in particular, is in the realm of the “suprascientific” [5] we shall continue (as we do at present) to be “whistling in the dark to keep our scientific courage up” [5].
Felix ID Konotey-Ahulu, Kwegyir Aggrey Distinguished Professor of Human Genetics, University of Cape Coast, Ghana and Consultant
Physician Genetic Counsellor, Sickle & Other Haemoglobinopathies 10 Harley St., London W1G 9PF
E-mail: felix@konotey-ahulu.com
Competing interests: None declared
References
1 Le Fanu J. The disappointments of the double helix: a master theory. J R Soc Med 2010; 103: 43-45. DOI.101258/jrsm.2009.09k077 February 2010
2 Crick FHC. The origin of the genetic code. J Mol. Biology 1968: 38: 367-379.
3 Medawar P. The Limits of Science. Oxford. Oxford University Press, 1985 pp xiii & 59.
4 Gitt Werner. In the beginning was Information. Christliche Literatur-Verbretung e.V.
Postfach 110135.33661 Bielefeld, Germany, 2001.
5 Konotey-Ahulu FID. The suprascientific in clinical medicine – a challenge for
Professor Know-All http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1121901
Brit Med J. 2001; 323: 1452-1453